Category: Outside the Box

Non-mainstream thoughts and musings

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Finding My Way

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about dissatisfaction in life, and wishing I could do more than I already am. But I’m 42, have 4 kids, and I work 45+ hours a week at a (mostly) desk job. I don’t have a lot of time for adventure or excitement.

I’m always looking for something exciting to do, whether it be tinkering with electronics, or bike commuting, or writing a novel, or producing podcasts… whatever sounds exciting, I want to do it.

But I can’t do everything I want to. I just don’t have the time and energy. (This is kind of a recurring theme on my blog…)

As a dreamer, I’m always trying to balance the reality of modern life with my heart’s desire to be an adventurer. Really, I love a good adventure. In fact, you could say I live for those moments, when I’m going down a road I’ve never seen before, or learning something new. There’s a cloud of mystery, a rush of endorphins that comes from doing something exciting and new.

Eventually, I stumbled across an article on Vocations from Art Of Manliness (which seems to be a recurring theme for me). And there were questions there, about how to discover your passions.

For me, passions were something that I’ve had stamped out of my life repeatedly. I’m passionate about a lot of things… but only things that are monetarily useful are allowed in today’s society. As you might imagine, this isn’t a great environment in which to find your Passion. Continue reading “Finding My Way”

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Rest, Work, and Sabbath

For the last few weeks, I’ve been busy. It would be safe to say I’m busier now than I ever have been before. And yet, every day I struggle to not feel guilty over the things I didn’t get done.

How many things am I involved with that I’ve put off? Sheesh. Let’s see:

  • This blog (thanks for reading! Last updated 2 weeks ago)
  • Weekly posts for The Badass Forge (skipped last week)
  • Occasional posts for the Bike Commuter Cabal blog (last posted there in August)
  • The ADD Masterminds podcast recording/editing (skipped 2 weeks)
  • Not Entirely Unlike Chiptune (last touched this 6 months ago)
  • Restoring a classic car (currently not running, haven’t touched it in weeks)
  • WIP non-fiction book on ADD life hacks (haven’t seen it in a month)
  • WIP fiction novel(s) (months… maybe years for parts of them)

And these are just the things I do that aren’t part of my normal family life, like cooking, Boy Scouts, house renovations, church music, and so on. Those things are getting put on back burners, too. I just can’t keep up with everything, so I’m dropping stuff left and right.

Clearly I needed a Sabbath, but what does that look like for a supervillain like me? How can I “rest” when there’s so much to do, and being creative restores my soul?

It’s a problem indeed.

I will have to make some hard decisions as to what will stay, and what will have to go. But I know my life will be better for it.

Sigh.

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What’s Your “Why?”

A lot of what we do nowadays is a waste of time.

There, I said it. If we look at ourselves, we know this is true. Deep down, we know we waste a lot of time.

Now, I’m okay with wasting time every now and then. I love a good video game, or just goofing around. But really, there’s a lot of things I do that I could use to evaluate. I mean, I know why I do some things, but that usually means “I just felt like it.” That’s not really a reason, per se.

So in light of my wife’s wonderful thoughts on “Why” I’ve decided to put together a list of the major time sinks in my life, and then think about why I do them. Here they are, in no particular order: Continue reading “What’s Your “Why?””

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Information Diet, Week 9

A while back, I wrote about how I was going to use Evernote to collect all my social media feeds, so I wouldn’t be tempted to check them constantly.

So here I am, about 2 months into my “experiment.” Has it worked so far? Well, yes and no.

In one sense, I’ve narrowed down my information input. I’ve unfollowed blogs and unfollowed people on facebook and Twitter, just to pare down the stream of junk coming into my “Pending” notebook. So in that sense, it’s been an improvement. On the other hand, I’m still easily distracted. I still find myself compulsively checking Twitter every now and then. It is getting better, though.

Some of my tools to channel my feeds into Evernote threw me a monkey wrench this week. Feedly suddenly (with no announcement) changed the ability to export feeds to a paid for feature. Which is fine, I guess, except I don’t like it when apps suddenly make features unavailable to non-paying users, or even worse, nullify a paid-for feature and ask you to buy it again. (There’s a few apps that are on my blacklist for this reason… Tapatalk is one, Endomondo is another.)

So that means instead of importing a couple of RSS feeds into Evernote, I’d have to set up a feed for every single blog I want to follow. Okay- fair game. I just narrowed down the list to a few I actually care about. That’s a win, right?

I took a break from using StayFocusd, because I was always stressing about how much time I had left to use a particular site. I never hit the limit, but it was the constant nagging in my mind that was driving me nuts. I may go back to it later. Just needed a break.

I think overall, the program is working. I’m still not 100% used to it, and when I’m bored I still scroll through Twitter and such for interesting things to fill my brain. But overall, it’s improved my focus noticeably.

 

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Get Used To Disappointment

Yesterday, I was disappointed, and in turn, I disappointed someone else.

It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t start off my day by saying “I feel like letting someone down today.”

And the sad part is, it wasn’t even my fault. My old car- admittedly, it’s old and unreliable- broke down. Big shocker? Not really. Did it disappoint me? Yeah. I was hoping it wouldn’t break.

But, the bigger truth here is that we’re always placing expectations on things, and we get mad when they don’t happen. I expect my car to not break down. I expect my children to learn responsibility when I don’t drill it into them at a young age. I expect my wife to be able to read my mind (admittedly, not that hard… I only think about a few things). I expect that my boss will always give me the easiest jobs.

And when none of those things happen, I’m disappointed.

And every time I screw up, I know I’m disappointing someone else. Every time, I think “that’s the last straw, they’re going to leave/fire/kick me now.” But you know what? Life is a balance of success and failures. Anybody who hasn’t tasted failure and disappointment hasn’t really lived. And I’ve done a lot of living, so I’ve failed a lot.

Why are we so afraid of failure? Sometimes it’s just out of our control. Maybe we should have known better, maybe we couldn’t have. Maybe we just feel bad because things didn’t turn out the way our optimistic selves thought they would.

So, the reality is, the more stuff I do, the more chances I have of failing. I guess I’m okay with that. I don’t like living in the safe zone all the time. If I wanted to play it safe, I wouldn’t have started biking to work, or bought a 50-year-old car to drive around. I wouldn’t have written a book, or started a band, or started a podcast, or any number of other things I’ve done.

I understand playing it safe keeps you from disappointing people. But sometimes, you just have to give it a shot anyway.

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New Podcast: ADD Masterminds

As if I didn’t have enough to do already, I somehow got talked into starting up a new podcast. Yes, that’s right, I co-host a podcast now.

Every now and then, you run across people that think a lot like you. And in some cases, the more you talk, the more you’ve got in common. Running into John was kind of like that. He’s got a heart for music like I do, he’s a dad, a writer, a musician, plus he’s Canadian, eh? Such a nice guy. How could two guys like us end up taking over the world?

So anyway, we decided to do a show based on the random topics our brains come up with and just needed to be discussed. Plus plotting for World Domination. So, here you go: the ADD Masterminds podcast. Don’t take it too seriously… we’re having fun.

May God have mercy on our souls.

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Anger, Disappointment, and Wisdom

Sometimes when you’re just be-bopping along, life comes up to you and sucker punches you. Sometimes, when you’re stuck in traffic and you’re driving a 50-year-old car, it overheats and breaks down. And our first natural response is to get mad.

Do we have the right to get mad about life in general? Well, it depends: are you mad that God allowed it to happen, or are you mad at yourself? Or are you just mad at something that you have no control over, and was (in all likelihood) statistically bound to happen eventually?

We have these funny ideas about how the world works, and who’s in control of things. Is it God? Is it physics? Is it our own willpower? Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Force?

Job was a righteous man who got very angry with how things played out. We see in Job chapters 38-41, God lays down this challenge in reply: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?” And Job, a righteous man, had nothing to say. He couldn’t defend his anger. Continue reading “Anger, Disappointment, and Wisdom”

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Information Diet – Week Five

A while back, I wrote about how I was using Zapier and IFTTT to filter all of my social media notifications through Evernote, so that I didn’t have to actually visit those sites on a regular basis. I’m now a month into it, and I figured it was time to post my findings.

In reality, how well it works depends on what my mind is focused on that day (or that hour). The good news is that it does indeed capture my social media interactions exactly like I wanted it to. The bad news is, it didn’t magically immediately change my habits, which is what is needed to actually make it useful.

Bottom line: the system does work when I use it. It doesn’t prevent me from still checking social media sites occasionally. For that…. I’ve got a secret weapon, called StayFocusd.

This program is a Chrome browser plug-in that allows me to limit how much time I can spend on certain websites. I can tell it certain times of the day (or days of the week) to track it, and I can even have it lock those sites out if I reach my limit. Obviously this is an extreme measure, but the reality is, how else am I going to enforce it? My ADD won’t allow me to not think about it. So the alternative is to manage that information, skim it in a usable way (with Evernote) and then discourage myself from going around the method.

So going forward, this week I’m going to start using StayFocusd to enforce my Social Media information management.

Artificial means are a necessary way for people like me to get things done. Artificial deadlines, artificial schedules, artificial website blackouts: I use whatever works. It can apply to writing, working, social media, recreation time, or whatever.

 

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Using Automation To Centralize Input

Recently, Zapier announced that they would be rolling out a new feature: multi-step automated internet functions they call “zaps.” Now, I’ve written about IfTTT and Zapier before, and if you’re plugged into the internet at all, it’s possible they can help you automate things that take up your precious time. I’m currently using these programs to auto-generate task lists every morning, and send myself reminders to update the list during the day. I also have an ongoing” to-do list, for things that are long-term projects. If I add an item to my Google tasks, it’s automatically added to my Evernote list. If someone follows me on Twitter, they’re automatically added to my contact list in Evernote. The goal is to centralize my information input: to conglomerate everything to one portal, where I can look through all the information I need in one place. It could be Google Docs/Keep, or Evernote, or Office 360, or whatever information management program you like. But it should be something that’s accessible anywhere, and is flexible enough to manage any kind of information.

But automation is a mixed blessing for me. It opens up a world of possibilities, and I usually spend more time playing with it than actually getting things done. This is especially true when playing with apps like Tasker, Evernote, and AutoKey. Continue reading “Using Automation To Centralize Input”

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Posts With Lasers

As someone with- how shall I say it- “questionable” focusing ability, I’m always fighting the urge to allow myself to be distracted. Thanks to the internet and social media, there’s never a shortage of distractions.

Gee, thanks, internet.

What I need is Laser Focus. And I don’t have it, not even close. But it is possible for me to focus for short periods of time, say, an hour or so.

I’ll be honest, I’m tired a lot. That’s mostly because I don’t get enough sleep, which compounds my focusing problem. But something has to give, right? I just can’t sleep 8 hours and take over the world. So I’m going to update the Blog® as often as I can without lowering the quality of my posts. Where does that balance lie? I guess I’ll have to find out. For now I’ll be working on material for some nonfiction books, and I’ll post some of that here when I can (hint: some of it is already posted!) and I need to focus more on that. Continue reading “Posts With Lasers”